


Midshipman's Malady

by starwheel



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Age of Sail, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Magic, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mentor/Protégé, Telepathic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 16:07:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11650053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starwheel/pseuds/starwheel
Summary: Due to their experiences aboard the Justinian, Horatio and Archie made a pact, that they would help each other (as best two omega are able) and tough out their heats alone, keeping their past strictly secret between them. Never again would they submit to the torture and isolation of "the cells" they knew on Justinian.But after Archie is lost during the cutting out expedition, Horatio finds himself alone, with nowhere to turn for help when his time comes. He resolves to suppress his heat, but his defences will not hold forever.





	Midshipman's Malady

**Author's Note:**

> -In this universe, it is socially acceptable for any young man below a certain age and rank to experience a heat. To be an 'omega' simply means to be someone who experiences heats. Not all young men suffer from the condition, but those that do will either outgrow their heat cycle (and become either beta or alpha), or else learn to strengthen their psychic walls so as to make their status undetectable to others. Suppressing a heat takes a toll when it's done too often.
> 
> -Because of old-fashioned religious stigma around heats, some puritanical captains of former days would force any midshipman suffering a heat into isolation inside the ship's "cells". The practices in relation to omegas aboard such ships became infamous in the fleet, and were gradually phased out, to be replaced by more humane treatment.
> 
> -Aboard the Indy, the modern approach prevails, and it is common practice for any young gentleman suffering with 'the midshipman's malady' to have an officer assigned to him, to provide comfort and relief, or else to oversee the boy's safe isolation.

"He came on yesterday. He's been hiding it."

At these words, Horatio went rigid where he lay in his hammock. 

"Yes, thank you, Gifford," Clark sighed. He was the oldest of them and he was always the first to run out of impatience with Gifford.

Horatio kept his eyes closed and his hands folded on his chest.

"I'm not lying," Gifford said. "Horatio's on heat, I know he is."

This talk could not be allowed to continue. Horatio abandoned his pose and sat up and got his legs over the side of the hammock. He stared at Gifford who was crouched in the corner against the bulkhead. Clark was leaning in the entry of the berth, his features shadowy in the gloom.

"I'm trying to sleep," Horatio said. He was proud to find his voice held no emotion.

"I saw you this morning," Gifford said blithely. He was spinning his paper disk toy between his fingers. It was an optical illusion toy his mother had sent him with a letter. 

"I saw you doing magic," he said. He looked like a cherub crouching there with his curly almost-white hair and his ruddy cheeks, the paper disk spinning and spinning as he twisted the string between his fingers. 

Horatio surged to his feet and Gifford sprang up as well.

"You don't know what you saw," Horatio said coldly. "I've been ill. Did it occur to you that I might have been casting a spell on account of that?"

"Let him sleep, Gifford," said Clark. He pushed back the cloth that was strung across the entryway. "Come on. Out."

"If he's just sick, why has he put up a spell to hide his scent?" said Gifford.

Clark snorted. Then slowly he turned his head and studied Horatio, a too-long look. 

"You've never come on," he said in almost marvelling tones.

"No," Horatio said at once, turning to face him. Light-headedness assailed him at that moment, nearly causing him to stagger. He disguised it with the roll of the ship, put his hand out to steady himself against the bulkhead. "I haven't."

"I figured you for an alpha," said Clark.

"And I am," said Horatio.

"He has a comfort blanket," said Gifford. "I've seen it."

Horatio rounded on Gifford and Gifford sprang away, slipping like an eel under Horatio's reaching arm.

"Well for christ's sake!" Clark hissed, coming into the berth. "We'll all be for it if you're doing them off the books. Have you really come on?"

"No!" Horatio caught himself against the locker as his legs went weak under him. "It's really not what you think."

The two midshipmen stared at him.

"Why in the name of god have you let it to get like this?" Clark said. "The Indy's cells aren't bad, you know. You'll have an officer -"

"I'm not - I really -" Horatio stammered. "It's not what you think -"

"What do you call it, then?"

"Please - just - just let me sleep it off." Horatio worked to keep his voice steady while his mind tried to produce the arguments that would save him. "I can stand my watch. I'll be - more myself if I can just sleep." He looked up into Clark's eyes. "I'll give you a month's spirit ration."

Clark said nothing. 

Horatio realised that he would have to beg. He opened his mouth, ready to do it, but then Clark said,

"Alright, Hornblower, alright!"

"I have your word?"

"Yes. Now get some rest, won't you? You're frightening Gifford."

Clark left. Horatio took Gifford by the shoulder and put him out of the berth as well. He pulled the sheet on the string across the entry. Then, with a sort of drunken stupid determination he searched the belongings he had hidden in the locker until he found the tightly-rolled little blanket - it was a comfort-blanket, small, only about the size of a half yard ensign. 

Most young men who suffered with the affliction kept something of the kind. Threaded with his own magic, it was comforting just to have it in his hands, after days of denying himself for fear that someone might see him with it.

He sunk into his hammock, put the blanket to his face and hid his face in it, squeezed his eyes shut, he breathed in the comforting smell.

He was not aware that Gifford had crept back into the berth and was standing over him until a small voice above him commented,

"Your teeth are chattering."

Horatio tensed his jaw and held his breath, trying to seem like a corpse. His face was very hot and sweaty and his head was throbbing badly. He released his breath, saying, "Leave me alone."

He shut Gifford out of his awareness along with the rest of the ship, and he turned inside himself and there was only the dancing blackness on his eyelids and the writhing wall he'd built inside - the spell.

*

When Horatio next woke it was to the sound of an angry voice coming through the wall, and footsteps thumping down the wooden steps into the gunroom.

He lay unmoving for a moment with his face buried in his comfort-blanket, his body sweaty and hot and sluggish. His mind took a frighteningly long span of seconds to piece together what was happening. 

One could hardly live in such cramped quarters aboard a frigate and not come to easily tell apart the voices of its officers. The owner of that irritable voice which could be heard barking at boys to get out of the way belonged to the Indefatigable's fourth lieutenant, a quite belligerent man called Edrich.

Horatio struggled up from the hammock as he realised the horrible implications of the presence of an officer in the gunroom. 

Clark had betrayed him.

"They're coming now," Gifford said, in a tone of voice that might have been remarking on a pretty full moon in the sky.

Gifford had been sitting quietly on the locker in the corner, keeping Horatio company in the berth this whole while, and now Horatio shot him a look of despairing helpless anger. But there was no time for it - and what good would it do to unleash his emotion on the child? Horatio needed to clean himself up, make himself look normal in the narrow window of time that he had.

His hands were clumsy and strange with the fever. He pulled his shirt straight, wiped his sweating face on the sleeve, stuffed the comfort-blanket which he'd been weakly biting out of sight just in time before the cloth that hung across the entry to the berth was roughly pulled aside. 

Lieutenant Edrich stepped through, Clark following close behind.

"Now, Mr Hornblower, what's all this?" said Edrich. "You're on heat? Why's your name not down in the books?" He made no attempt to hide his impatience and irritation at having been called on to visit the middy's dim little berth, and indeed he seemed to loom unnaturally large there with his head bent and his shoulders rounded in his uniform and his thick forefinger tapping on his hat which he held in his hand.

All midshipmen were technically obliged to put their names down if they ever had experienced a heat, so that the fact of it would be there on record, their cycle could be monitored, and the ship would be ready for any fluctuations in magic that might occur and potentially impact the ship's running. The middy would go in the cells, or have an officer assigned to them in good order.

"I - I'm not." Horatio swallowed thickly. "Sir. As I was trying to explain to Mr Clark, I have been sleeping off a fever -"

"He's lying, sir," Clark said, leaning from behind Edrich's shoulder in the cramped space. "Gifford saw him spelling himself this morning."

"Got under the ship's detection charms, did you, Hornblower? Very industrious. And a serious offence, I'm sure you're well aware."

"I - Sir, I -"

"Do you have an understanding with an officer?" Edrich said. When Horatio only opened and closed his mouth, at a loss for words, the man's already-thin patience wore through. "Well for god's sake, Mr Hornblower, spit it out!"

"I don't think he has any arrangement, sir," Clark said, doing a poor job of hiding his delight at having a part in this drama. "Shall I ask about the wardroom, sir?"

"No, no. If there's an officer, he can fetch Mr Hornblower from the cells. Come along then, boy, look lively! Collect your pieces if you have any you want with you."

The lieutenant had given him an order, and under normal circumstances Horatio would have obeyed it at once.

Just then, however, he found he was not himself. It was as if his bodily impulses had utterly overtaken his thinking, and he could only stand rooted to the spot staring like a fool. He did not want to go with Edrich. He could not.

The cells... The dark, close space, pressing in, the magic scribed on the walls that pinned you in place like an insect behind a pane of glass.

"Well?" Edrich barked. "Don't stand about gaping!"

"I really, I feel much better now, sir -" Horatio said, his voice hollow and strange to his own ears.

Edrich dropped his chin to his chest briefly in a show of irritation, then he came towards Horatio and reached out to grab him. He did this physically, with his hands, and psychically, with his magic. He reached matter-of-factly for Horatio's "hand", the hand of the body that was only in the mind. It was the most unremarkable and ordinary thing for a superior officer to do to a junior officer, and Horatio had submitted countless times to that mundane magic contact. 

But right then Horatio's entire being revolted against the man reaching out to touch him in that way.

The alpha aura surrounding Edrich was utterly repugnant, the aura seemed to expand around him and make him appear huge and looming in the tiny berth, like a giant who had forced his way inside a mouse hole. 

This mundane psychic touch, this most ordinary and impersonal touching of magic energies which men performed many times in the course of a day aboard a man o' war - was at this moment, to Horatio's heightened senses, utterly repellant, intolerable.

Edrich's large hand landed on Horatio's shoulder and in reaction, Horatio, quite against his will, bent at the waist and vomited on the boards and partly on the lieutenant's shoes.

There was a beat of stunned silence. 

Then there was uproar.

Edrich dragged Horatio out of the berth by the neck of his shirt and into the narrow passage.

"Out of the way!" he roared at the boys who he found gathered there trying to eavesdrop.

Horatio nearly fell as Edrich pulled him roughly along. He heard someone say - _"Hornblower's an omega?"_ and realised with a strange, blank sense of horror that news of this would be all over the ship in no time.

That he had thrown up on the unpopular lieutenant's shoes was quickly made known to the gunroom. The boys were hiding their faces as they laughed, their eyes large in the dimness as they stared at Horatio.

Everyone had taken Horatio to be an alpha. The _Marie Gallant_ , the plague ship, his steering of the fire ship during his lieutenant's exam - Horatio had always been so careful to conduct himself in a way that would leave no doubt in anyone's mind.

But that was all ruined now.

They had reached the gangway and Edrich forced him to climb it, shoving him in the back.

Horatio should speak, he should try to plead his case, to protest. If he exerted himself, maybe he could still convince Edrich that he merely had the flu, and he could buy himself some time by seeing the ship's doctor. But his tongue seemed thick in his mouth and he found he could form no words and Edrich swore at him and pushed him and Horatio could not speak. He climbed the steps in a daze.

*

It was drizzling up on deck. 

The officer of the watch, the quartermaster at the wheel, the men at work and the idlers, all look up with curiosity at the sight of the lieutenant pulling Horatio along by the collar of his shirt.

The situation was bad, and it was about to get immeasurably worse, but Horatio could not make himself think clearly. 

It was frightening. He had always relied on his mind to work rapidly, and it always had, in the heat of battle in a game of whist, or when the Indy was engaged in action and Horatio was commanding the men of his division. His thoughts would sometimes race as if his mind were a mechanical device suddenly whirring at ten times its ordinary speed. But the opposite was happening now.

There was a fog over his mind. 

The officers and the men were all staring as Edrich shoved him along. Horatio's face was cold and wet with drizzle and he could hear his own breathing which was shaky and shallow, but he could not feel his body as he walked. It was very queer indeed.

His career, his promise. It was all gone. He had thought he could begin anew aboard the Indy. He had been wrong. It would be a return to the days of the Justinian. No one would look at him the same way again-

"You'll go in the cells, boy," Edrich was growling in his ear, and the lieutenant tried once more to touch Horatio with his magic.

The next thing Horatio was aware of, he was lying on the deck, and there was Edrich a small distance away, sitting in a similar attitude on his backside, evidently having been thrown backwards by Horatio's magic. 

Edrich looked like he could not believe what had just happened, and for a moment he seemed lost for words. Then swiftly his expression turned murderous. 

"You-" he seethed through gritted teeth. In an instant he was up and grabbing Horatio savagely. Horatio's shoes slipped and skidded on the drizzle-wet deck and he nearly went down again, his shirt tearing in the man's grip, the collar pulled uncomfortably tight under his jaw as Edrich dragged him upright.

"Just what is going on here, Mr Edrich?" said lieutenant Doyle, who was now hurrying towards them.

"The boy's on heat, sir," Edrich ground out. He was a prideful man. His shoes had been vomited on. That in itself was bad enough. To then suffer the indignity of being thrown to the deck by a middy's magic - intolerable.

"You men, lay aft here!" Edrich shouted to a group of men who were close.

"Do you really think it necessary..." Doyle said in an undertone.

"You want him to throw the both of us, do you?" Edrich replied.

That was all that needed to be said.

Five men had come. Edrich had a mean grip on Horatio's arm. 

"Right then." Doyle reached for Horatio, using his magic - restraining magic. With restraining magic, Horatio would have no way of escaping. He would be forced into the cell, that dark place - the spells on the walls inside, no way out, nowhere to hide, the restraining magic pressing in on all sides, leaving him entirely helpless.

Doyle's magic touched Horatio and what happened next was unclear.

There was a high-pitched ringing in Horatio's ears. He found himself again on the ground, groping on his hands and knees, no thought in his head, only the animal impulse to flee. He managed to stand. He looked back he saw with bewilderment that Edrich and Doyle and the crewmen were sprawled in a heap on the deck, as if they had been thrown by the impact of a cannonball. 

" _On him!"_ Edrich roared as he struggled up.

More men and the bosun were thumping along the deck towards Horatio, their faces grim. A burly crewman reached him first and pulled him to the ground. Horatio's cheekbone struck the deck as the crewman pinned him, and then more bodies were piling on top of him. The weight of their bodies was horrible, their hands grabbing him, holding him down, giving him no means of resisting - was this what it was like to be pinned by an alpha? Why had Archie ever found any comfort in it?

When they pulled him to his feet, Horatio was dimly aware that Harper the second lieutenant was among them now, had come up from the wardroom to see about the commotion, and hands from below had come as well. It seemed as if most of the ship had turned out.

"Please, sir!"

Harper was just getting the story from Doyle and Edrich (the latter spluttering almost incoherent), when Gifford appeared. Horatio's eyes caught on what he held aloft in his hand.

It was Horatio's comfort-blanket. Gifford had brought it up on deck.

Horatio could only stare in abject mortification. This was almost too nightmarish to comprehend. 

Before Harper or Doyle could react, Edrich came forward, snatched the comfort-blanket from Gifford's hand, and pitched it over the side into the water.

"There you go, boy!" he shouted.

Horatio couldn't even react to this - to losing that much-beloved, ratty bit of cloth he'd had since his first heat. His father had given it to him when he'd presented as an omega. Soft and careworn, he'd scent-marked on it and locked the scent with spelling so it would have no odour to anyone but himself. One of the few personal effects that had been a constant in his life so far in the Royal Navy. It was floating away on the water now, it would rot away in the waves.

"In the cell with him!" 

Harper put out his arm to try and stay the men. "Now just a moment-"

But they were already surging forward, carrying Horatio along like a current of water. 

The magic inside Horatio erupted like a vast air bubble that had risen through a depth of many leagues and now broke the surface. 

For several seconds, he was free, and blindly Horatio turned to try and crawl away. The deck under his hands seemed to have a throbbing pulse, like a heart beat, so over-sensitised and feverish was he in that moment that he fancied he could pour himself between the slats and become absorbed into that heartbeat. 

Then rough hands were grabbing Horatio about the shoulders, forcing him down - someone had a hand fisted in his hair-

"Just get him in the cell!" Edrich was shouting. "He'll sink the bloody ship!"

There were many hands of magic groping horrendously for Horatio's inner body, the body that was a magic current, the hands seemed to claw at him, and suddenly in his mind's eye there was Simpson.

_"What's the matter, Snotty? Don't you like the dirty floor?"_

_He was standing over Horatio in the dank little cell, sneering down at him._

_How Horatio had struggled, how he had fought in vain against the constraints of the spells inside the cell, Simpson's narrow face grinning down at him all the while._

_"That's where a dirty little omega like you belongs," Simpson said. He put his boot to Horatio's neck. "Isn't it?"_

The men who had been restraining Horatio gave a collective shout of disbelief at the eruption of raw magic. They were thrown off Horatio as effectively as if an Atlantic roller had struck them.

Horatio stared about him, only half-seeing the men all strewn about. The astonishment on the faces of the seamen was plain - many had not felt this sort of power before, the power of an omega in heat.

And they piled on him again, throwing themselves bodily on him to keep him down. 

Even Harper, the second lieutenant, who was by no means an unkind man, had got his knee in Horatio's back to keep him down.

"Bring something to tie him!" someone shouted.

 _"What in god's name is going on here!"_ a great voice bellowed - the voice a captain used to be heard above the roar of broadsides.

Everyone looked up and a deadly quiet descended as the captain and the first officer came striding down the main deck.

"Any man not on watch - remaining on deck - _will be put before the rack!_ " Pellew shouted, his voice rasping with fury. "Pipe down if you please, Mr Harris!"

The bosun's pipe wailed and the men were hurried below. The officers and the remaining men, along with Horatio, held their places uncertainly, as if they were posed to depict a tableau.

"Mr Bracegirdle," Pellew said.

"Captain on deck!" Bracegirdle shouted, and at once the officers were up and coming smartly to attention.

The drizzle was still spattering down on them, and Horatio was the last to struggle to his feet, his hands slipping on the wet deck. He braced himself and stood, but his legs wobbled and would not take his weight and he sank to his knees again.

"You men." Pellew lifted his chin, speaking to the seamen. "About your business."

The remaining seamen dispersed.

"Mr Harper. Report."

"Sir." The second lieutenant fixed his gaze on the middle distance as Pellew came to stand directly in front of him. "Midshipman Hornblower's on heat. He's resisting going into the cells."

Pellew said nothing for a moment. The air was thick with tension as his officers, and the ship at large, waited to see what he would do. 

Pellew was still staring at Lieutenant Harper as he spoke his next orders.

"Mr Bracegirdle. Help Mr Hornblower to his feet, if you please."

*

Horatio was curled up tight in the corner, wedged in between the captain's cot and the wall of the cabin.

It was under Pellew's orders that he had been stowed there. It was utterly mysterious to Horatio how Pellew would know that a dark, quiet corner such as this was precisely where Horatio most wanted to be - when Horatio himself had not known until now. 

"What is the procedure upon outbreak?"

The door of the sleeping cabin was hooked open, allowing soft lantern light and shadow patterns in from the after cabin, and Horatio could hear the captain speaking to his lieutenants.

"Inform the officer of the watch, sir," came Harper's reply.

"And who was the officer on watch?"

"I was, sir," said Doyle.

"We thought to act quickly, sir," Edrich broke in. "When they're mids, they'll usually go in the cells-"

"Indeed!" Pellew's voice rose dangerously. "Usually not conveyed by a mob!"

Horatio could not see him, but he could feel the captain's anger as if it were a furious gale gusting through the cabin.

He shuddered and tucked his head down into his arms folded tightly across his knees, his fingers gripping his elbows.

"And?" Pellew was saying. "Are you quite satisfied with the _spectacle_ you created?" He had begun to pace, striding up and down. "Four of my officers. Seven crewmen. In a scrum over a midshipman on the main deck!"

There was a tense stretch of silence, broken only by the creaking of the ship and the angry thump of the captain's tread.

"I thought, sir -" Edrich faltered. "I thought the sooner we had him in the cells-"

"So you elected to use force." Pellew halted. "With no spells of protection. You attempted to subdue a distressed omega in heat. An astounding display of ill judgement. Mr Doyle? Mr Harper?"

"Proper practice was not followed, sir," said Harper. "I take full responsibility-"

"You are all of you responsible. Come!" Pellew barked this last word in response to a knock at the cabin door. 

Horatio heard the low murmur of Bracegirdle's voice.

"Very good, Mr Bracegirdle, I'll hear your report," said Pellew. "You gentlemen will oblige me by resuming your duties," he added, his manner very cold indeed. "I think I've heard quite enough."

"Sir, if I may-"

" _Dismissed_ , Mr Harper!"

Horatio listened as the officers filed out. Bracegirdle began his report at the captain's sharp prompting. 

Minutes passed as Horatio drifted, the thoughts and memories and images that floated up in his mind disjointed and confused. 

He became aware all at once that Pellew was now alone in the after cabin, and that there had been quiet for some time. He felt it with certainty, not merely from the sounds, but from the quality of the atmosphere, which he could feel with a prickling of his skin, with an animal sense.

His alertness sharpened to a point as he heard Pellew's footsteps crossing the after cabin.

*

Pellew paused in the doorway, looking down at Horatio curled in the corner.

Slowly, slowly he came near. Slowly he knelt down. Horatio's ribs seemed oddly constrained, his breaths tight and shallow. It was not right that the captain should kneel.

He flickered a look up, briefly meeting the captain's gaze before he had to lower his eyes again.

"You look blasted cold shivering in that corner, Mr Hornblower," Pellew murmured. He reached behind and pulled the blanket from the cot. "Lean forward now."

Horatio put his hand out shakily on the boards and leant forward, his head almost in Pellew's chest as Pellew draped the blanket over his shoulders. "There." Horatio sat back and Pellew pulled the blanket securely around him, looking him over with an assessing eye as he did so.

Horatio stole another glance at the captain's face. He could read no trace of his earlier anger there.

After a moment of nerving himself, Horatio spoke. 

"I'm sorry, sir." His words seemed to slur ever so slightly, as if he were drunk.

"You do not need to apologise for an act of nature."

"I cast spells to - to try to stop it -" Horatio's throat ached abominably, making speech hard, and he realised he could say no more without crying. Why? Why did he have to be so weak?

“Come, do not distress yourself, sir." Pellew braced his hand up on the side of the cot, that way seeming almost to bracket Horatio in, to pen him in with his kneeling body, and Horatio became conscious of how close the man was, and he found himself immensely comforted by his nearness, by the steady regard of his dark eyes, the quiet authority of his voice, the smell of him.

"Tell me something, Mr Hornblower. Does it seem to you that the Indefatigable is incapable of weathering a midshipman's heat? Hm? That she has not done so many times before? I daresay that storm we had in the Gulf of Lion was a trifle more challenging for her. And on that occasion, did a single rope on her part? Did a spar carry away?"

Pellew's expectant look demanded an answer.

"No, sir."

"No indeed. Well then. I think we can safely assume she'll bear up tolerably well under the present circumstances."

A knock came again from the door to the after cabin. 

"I want you to remain where you are, Mr Hornblower, is that understood?" said Pellew.

"Yes, sir." Horatio wanted to be nowhere else.

"Good man."

With a lingering look at Horatio, Pellew stood and withdrew. Horatio sat shivering, missing the captain's presence.

He did not have long to wait on his own however, as after some brief exchange of words, Pellew returned with the ship's doctor, Gould.

*

"You don't like being in the cells, Mr Hornblower?"

Horatio stayed silent.

"You don't think you might rather ride it out safely in a cell?" the doctor tried again.

"No, sir," Horatio said quietly. 

"Why's that."

Gould was kneeling near Horatio, his medical case beside him, the ship's muster book in his hand. Pellew looked on from the doorway as the doctor opened the muster book and turned its pages, passed his finger down the margin.

"Hornblower, Horatio. Midshipman. Justinian." The doctor looked at Horatio over the top of his spectacles. "Did you go in cells in Justinian, Mr Hornblower?"

Horatio's throat had gone tight and his chest felt tight also, and he could only breathe in a shallow way. He swallowed as his eyes began to burn and to his shame he found he could not hold back his tears.

"Yes, sir," he said thickly.

"Had a bad old time of it, eh?" said the doctor. "How many heats have you had, lad?"

"Eight, sir."

"Eight. This is your ninth?" 

"Yes, sir."

"Your first here on the Indy?"

"No, sir."

"How many?"

“Only...only one before now, sir.”

“And when was that?”

"May, sir."

"You bore that out on your own, did you? Or did you have an understanding with an officer?"

Horatio stared at the buckle on the doctor's shoe.

"Or another midshipman?" said the doctor. "Just yourself?"

"Midshipman...Kennedy," Horatio said. "We..."

"Kennedy?" The doctor paused and looked over his shoulder at the captain. "Ah. Yes. I remember the lad." 

Gould consulted the muster book once more. 

"There's no status recorded for Kennedy either. You came together from Justinian..." He looked at Horatio and his eyes behind his spectacles where hawkish, shrewd. "He suffered with heats himself, did he? You helped each other best you could?"

Horatio nodded.

"A dangerous game, Mr Hornblower."

The doctor closed the book and got to his feet, a quiet grunt escaping him as he straightened his back. 

There came a knock on the door of the main cabin.

"Come!" Pellew called, and he and the doctor went into the main cabin. 

Horatio could hear lieutenant Bracegirdle's voice.

"Have you sent to see about his comforter?" he heard the doctor ask. "He'll be easier if he has it. It'll be a bit of cloth, he'll have it in his berth-"

"I'm to understand it was lost overboard," came Bracegirdle's stolid reply.

"Lost overboard?" Pellew repeated.

"Lieutenant Edrich...seems to have thrown it overboard, sir."

There was an ominous pause before Pellew said, "I see."

"Well," said the doctor, "he's locked his jaws, alright. He's borne out his last heat without an alpha, that will have been a strain. This is the combined effect of two heats, the magic carried over from the last. If he were older, perhaps he'd have weathered this one as well, but at this age, they don't have the means-"

"What can you do?" said Pellew.

"The quickest solution would be to put him in cells. Otherwise I can use a breaker on him."

"A breaker?" said Bracegirdle. "That's rather extreme, isn't it?"

"The situation is extreme, Mr Bracegirdle." 

Horatio heard the soft thump of slow pacing footsteps and knew them to be the captain's.

"I haven't seen one this bad before," Gould went on. "Usually they tire themselves out and release naturally, but I suspect he's using something to suppress it and he's become enmeshed in the spell. He must be induced, one way or another." 

There was a ladened silence, with only the captain's slow pacing before the stern windows. 

"He threw off a dozen men I'm told?" the doctor said.

He received no reply.

"Well, well. The strain of it isn't healthy," he said. "I wouldn't like to leave him to get worse than this."

"I won't use force," Pellew said, coming to a halt in view of the doorway to the sleeping cabin, so that Horatio could see him, stood facing the doctor, his hands clasped behind his back.

"It would be better if he submitted voluntarily," Gould said. "I can't imagine he'll go into the cells voluntarily." He lowered his voice, adding, "I've heard about ships like Justinian. The types of cells they keep-"

"Yes, thank you, Doctor." Pellew turned to look out at the coming darkness through the stern windows.

"The fever..." Bracegirdle paused as if searching for the proper words. "Will the boy-"

"It may kill him if it is not allowed to run its course," said Gould. "He must be persuaded to part his jaws or the trapped energy will tear him apart. And I caution you, Captain - if the attempt should fail, the lock will worsen. That is the real danger. The situation may become irrecoverable - and I'm sure I do not need to tell you, the ship might take damage."

"I understand," Pellew said brusquely, and with a sniff he turned sharply from the windows and came around the table. "Mr Bracegirdle, please ready a spell of conduction. Keverig's Circle will do. Have Mr Cartwright and his mates assist you."

"Aye aye, sir." 

"And my compliments to Mr Bowles, I will see him to assist with the preparations here."

It was an indication of his alarm that Bracegirdle did not answer in the affirmative directly, but instead with a question. "You mean to do this yourself, sir?"

"The energy released will be sizeable, will it not, Doctor?" said Pellew.

"Oh yes. Yes indeed."

"The task is my own. There is no question."

"Aye aye, sir."

Horatio heard footsteps as Bracegirdle made to leave.

"And Mr Bracegirdle?"

"Sir?"

"If you have an officer in mind to attend Mr Hornblower once he is free of the lock, I will hear your recommendation when you have the man's assent."

There was a pause.

"Yes, sir. But...sir, do you mean you will not be attending him yourself?"

"I will not."

Horatio shrank deeper into his corner, pressing his forehead into the side of the cot, unable to untangle the knot of emotions that these words produced in him. He had not, of course, entertained any idea that the captain would ever lower himself to attending a mere midshipman. Horatio had never been with an officer before...had never been with anyone before. Perhaps it was the thought of being with one of the officers like that, the inescapable fact of it coming home to him now, that caused such strong feelings of dread and anxiety to come over him.

"Select the officer promptly, Mr Bracegirdle."

"Aye aye, sir. Will I send up an article of the man's clothing for Hornblower to use in lieu of his comforter?"

"Yes," Pellew answered curtly, his voice somewhat stilted, impatient. "Yes. Very good."

Bracegirdle took his leave.

"If I may make a final suggestion, Captain," said Gould.

"Hmh?"

"It would doubtless do the men some good to see the boy go into the cells. Even if only briefly. After he has released, but before he has been with the officer. That would be the best time for it."

"And what would be the necessity of that, Doctor?" Pellew said sharply. It was the first time Horatio had ever heard the captain speak in anger to the ship's wispy-haired old surgeon. "You think there is a perception among the men that I do not have complete control of my own ship, sir?" 

"Not at all, sir-"

"Then I will thank you, Doctor, to confine yourself to caring for the health of the men, and leave issues of morale to me."

"Of course, sir," said old Gould. "I meant no offence, sir." After a long moment of silence there came a faint clinking of glass. "I will administer a draught to the boy," the doctor said. "By your leave."

"Carry on, Doctor."

*

_"You're not getting tired now, are you, Snotty?" Simpson dangled the end of the knotted rope in front of Horatio's face. "We're not even half way through the lesson." He brought his face close to Horatio's, his strange cold eyes roving over Horatio in a way that made Horatio's skin crawl. "Nobody wants your stink all over the ship. So you'd better keep that wall up, hadn't you?"_

_Horatio tried to squirm away from Simpson but it was as if a terrible fatigue was on him and he could not even lift his head._

_Simpson curled the rope slowly over and over his hand. "I thought you were supposed to be a clever boy, Snotty. What would Captain Keen have to say if he saw you like this?" Simpson's brows puckered, as if in an expression of pity. "Poor Snotty. Poor, poor Snotty. You're behaving just like a beast."_

_He stood and gestured lazily to the bosun's mate who sat drinking near the cell door._

_"You should be grateful me and Roberts are here to teach you how to control yourself."_

_The bosun's mate laughed._

_"Say thank you, Snotty." Simpson snapped the rope taut between his hands._

_Horatio grit his teeth and tried once again with every fibre of his being to push himself up from the floor. It was no use. He could barely manage to twitch his fingers._

_"Say it!"_

_Simpson hit him with the rope. Again and again. Horatio's body jumped helplessly each time the rope struck him, and again and again Simpson's hand clawed at Horatio's walls, trying to get in, tearing at him._

_"Say it, Snotty!"_

"Mr Hornblower!" The voice sounded like gunshot, shattering the reality of the scene. "You're dreaming!"

Horatio found himself in a dimly lit cabin, staring into the face of Captain Pellew.

"There now." Pellew's hand smoothed Horatio's sweaty damp hair back from his forehead. "There now. Do you know where you are?"

"Your cabin, sir," Horatio answered in a small voice. His heart was still thumping from the dream, and he was shivering even though he felt much too hot.

"That's right," Pellew said. "I ordered you to remain here, did I not?" His tone was almost formal, as if he were making some enquiry on the quarterdeck. Again his hand smoothed the sticky curls back from Horatio's brow and Horatio found that his eyes were drifting closed, so soothing was that slow caress.

"I fancy you haven't had much sleep of late," Pellew said, so quietly that he might have been speaking to himself.

"Do you know the walls it is necessary for a captain to maintain, Mr Hornblower?" Pellew asked abruptly.

Horatio blinked, trying to make his mind work properly, to make sure that he did not speak stupidly. 

"No, sir." 

"Let me show you something." Pellew put out his hand, the hand of the mind, matter-of-factly. "Quickly now, man."

Horatio obeyed without thinking, placing his hand in the captain's, and at once Pellew guided him inward, doing so without any fuss or production, he took that tentative tendril of Horatio's mind and directed it with easy confidence until it touched the outmost wall of magic in the captain's own mind.

Horatio jerked back instinctively, feeling the thrum of the captain's magic signature inside that wall.

He stared at Pellew in amazement.

"I have never known you to be faint-hearted, Mr Hornblower," the captain rumbled, and he gestured impatiently with his hand.

Feeling as if he must surely still be inside a dream, Horatio reached again, and again Pellew caught that shy reaching vine and drew it into himself, and again Horatio found himself touching the warm, living wall of the captain's defences.

Never had Horatio even dared dream of being invited to take such a liberty, though often enough certainly he had worked magic with the captain in the course of his service, as had all the officers serving aboard the Indefatigable. But to be granted a view of the spell work which the captain had constructed inwardly was an unimaginable honour.

Very, very delicately, Horatio touched, allowing himself only the merest brush of his fingertips, as if he were touching the wings of a butterfly.

Outwardly, Pellew became perfectly still, tolerating Horatio's shy touches within, meeting Horatio's wide-eyed questioning gaze with placid forbearance.

"A captain has need of such defences," Pellew said after a while, clearing his throat. He shifted on his knee, and it could not have been comfortable for him, kneeling there for so long. It was not right, Horatio knew. It was outrageous that he should be wasting the captain's time like this, that he had created so much chaos for the man -

"None of that now," Pellew said sharply, his hand in his mind reaching out swiftly and grasping that slender questing vine of Horatio's which had begun to shrink away in shame.

"I would like to see your defences, Mr Hornblower." Pellew could have been asking to see Horatio's gun crew during a Sunday ship's inspection.

"My-?" 

"Smartly, now," Pellew said, and the beautiful colour and robust character of his magic pulsed warmly around Horatio's vine, and Horatio realised that he must now guide the captain back the way they had come.

"Yes, sir," Horatio mumbled, wiping his sweaty face, licking his lips and frowning, gathering his tattered wits as best he could. He was used to his outer walls being touched. That was the purpose of an outer wall. But to guide the captain to it with the purpose of showing him the spell work was no trivial undertaking. 

As neatly as Horatio liked his men to be turned out during inspection, he now felt a throb of panic that the captain would touch him and find Horatio's work wanting. 

The spell to suppress the heat and keep all sign of it locked inside was ugly and quite appalling to behold, Horatio knew. He and Archie used to help each other bear out the pain of casting it. The spell may have bit into him painfully, cut into his walls, but it ensured that the walls would not fall. Horatio had reinforced the spell many times since the previous day, treading and re-treading it, reciting its incantation as if it were a prayer to ward off evil, with such bloodyminded obsession, that now there could be no way of undoing it. 

Horatio drew that tendril of the captain along with the utmost care - his hand seemed crude and clumsy, holding a thing of such beauty.

Through the dark tangle of trees. The wall loomed ahead, swirling like a great storm, flashes here and there of lightning in the silent brooding tumult. Horatio brought the captain to the wall and placed his hand upon it.

At once Pellew drew in a sharp breath through his nose. His eyes fell closed briefly, his face tensing.

"Good god..."

It was hard to concentrate with the captain touching him in this way. Horatio had never known such a touch. It was not like the professional grip of the hand which was commonplace in the course of working spells with other men. This was different. To be slowly touched in this way, by that careful, deft hand, so warm and alive with the magic essence of the man. Horatio felt suddenly as if he were naked.

"You will release it to me at once, Mr Hornblower," Pellew said sharply.

Horatio drew back in alarm, shying from Pellew's touch.

"How did you come to know such a spell?" Pellew demanded.

Horatio shook his head weakly.

"By god, I will have it off you!" Pellew seethed, and he leant close and Horatio thumped his head back against the bulkhead in surprise, and then the captain had put his forehead to Horatio's and suddenly a wash of heat swept over Horatio, a warm tall wave crashing against his defences, and it did not feel like an attack at all. It was exquisite to be bathed in it, to have it foam and roll across him, to feel the captain utterly potent in it. 

"Release it to me," Pellew commanded as another wave rolled and broke and Horatio gasped, trying to turn his head aside, and then an instant later seeking the captain frantically, their foreheads resting together, this touch overwhelming.

"Show me where it begins," Pellew said. He put his nose under Horatio's jaw and breathed and Horatio did not have to think. He reached his hand into those rolling warm waters, desperately seeking, and then Pellew's hand was in his, gripping his with firm reassurance, and Horatio was guiding his hand inwards, inwards past his defence, into himself, to a place he could not have found with his thinking mind, but which instinct directed him to. He drew the captain's hand to the place where the burning strangling spell was rooted, stinging and poisonous full of thorns in that tender place, and he cried out as the captain wrapped his hand around it.

"Hold onto me, now." Pellew drew Horatio against him, giving him his chest to push against, and Horatio hid his face in the man's neck. He locked up in a rictus of pain as Pellew seized the stem and drew the long terrible thing out of its rooting place.

Pellew grunted as the electric rush of trapped energy burst free, the maelstrom that Horatio had been holding locked inside him.

Horatio was trembling, blind, the force of the release something that could not be in any way refused or resisted. The magical energy rushed from him copiously, it seemed it would never end, and the terrible weight that had been crushing him was suddenly lifting, leaving him feeling weightless.

He clutched at Pellew as if he were drowning. Pellew murmured to him and kneaded and rubbed the back of his neck. 

The collapsing spell was dissolving quickly, tumbling down, washing away.

"There you are," said Pellew, his voice a low rumble in Horatio's ear.

And then the scent of the man hit him. 

With the spell removed, Horatio's long-suppressed heat unfurled all at once, like a bud blooming open. The force of his arousal, tamped down brutally until now, struck him like a blow to the head. His own scent was releasing, perfuming the air with his arousal.

Pellew straightened slowly, his eyes flickering over Horatio's face. "Are you well? Speak to me, boy."

Horatio meant to answer, but instead he found himself staring into the captain's beautiful dark eyes in mute supplication.

Pellew's brows drew together and he cupped his hand to Horatio's cheek. “Horatio?”

Horatio's eyes fell closed and as if in a waking dream, he turned towards that touch and rubbed his face against the coarse palm of Pellew's hand, his lips parted, he breathed in the smell of him.

There came raised voices and rapid hammering on the door to the after cabin.

Horatio startled, his eyes flew to Pellew's face and something in the captain's expression stole his breath away.

Pellew cleared his throat. He gently broke their embrace and reached for the cot, pushing himself to his feet with a wince. He took Horatio by the elbow and helped him to stand and guided him to sit on the cot.

As he turned to the doorway, the men were already bursting into the after cabin, barging inside when their shouts had received no answer.

"Captain!"

"Success, sir!" Mr Bowles shouted.

"Incredible -"

"Never felt the bloody like of it!"

"The ship?" Pellew said loudly, his eyes seeking out Bracegirdle.

"She took it sweetly, sir!" Bracegirdle was beaming, his round face flushed and shining with sweat. But his smile faltered. "Is Mr Hornblower-?"

"He is recovering," said Pellew, shifting in the doorway so that his shadow moved across Horatio sitting on the cot. The statement was answered by a spontaneous shout of approval from the officers and the carpenter's mates, all of them apparently ebullient.

"Some decorum, gentlemen!" Pellew rasped.

Horatio sat staring at the captain's back. The scent of the captain was everywhere in the cabin, potent to him now, all over the cot on which he sat. Pellew slept here, laid his head on the pillow. A flush of heat went through Horatio as he thought of how he'd brushed his lips against the captain's hand. What had come over him?

"Mr Harper," Pellew said, "I want that circle broken up and cleansed within the hour!"

"Aye aye, sir!"

"I'll have a reading of the ship's magic, Mr Bowles."

"Aye aye, sir-"

"Make way for the doctor!" a voice shouted.

The men parted to let Gould through, and with the exception of Bracegirdle, they emptied from the after cabin to set about their work.

"Well, well, Mr Hornblower, back with the living are we," Gould said as he came into the sleeping compartment. He put his hand to Horatio's forehead. Horatio shakily composed his hands in his lap, attempting to hide the obvious shape of his erection in his breeches. His eyes remained fixed on Pellew, who had turned to face him once more. Horatio felt as if he had not eaten in days and days, and to look at the captain allowed some of the ache of that hunger to ease, and the captain, standing with his hands clasped behind his back, returned Horatio's regard.

"Where is the officer?" Gould asked. "Let's put the lad out of his misery."

"I have selected the man, sir," Bracegirdle said. He remained in the after cabin, close enough that Horatio could see him beyond Pellew's shoulder, but making no attempt to approach the doorway, which Horatio was grateful for. It was embarrassing enough to have the doctor see him - and smell him - in his current state.

"Yes," said Pellew, a little nonsensically, and Horatio's groggy mind groped at comprehending the significance of this officer Gould spoke of. Then, belatedly, he remembered that the captain had said that he would assign an officer to 'attend' Horatio. 

Horatio eyes grew large with dismay, he could not keep the emotion from his face.

"Mr Harper volunteered. He was not the only one." Bracegirdle held out a folded bundle of cloth. "But I thought him the best candidate. Here is his shirt, sir."

"Excellent. Let the boy have it," Gould said.

Pellew remained in the doorway. He did not move to take the shirt from Bracegirdle. 

There was a strange feeling then for Horatio, like he'd gone to place his foot on the top step of a staircase and found it missing.

"I think..." Pellew trailed off, gazing at Horatio, and Horatio felt entwined with him then, as they had been when their hands had been touching in their minds, when Horatio had taken Pellew's hand and drawn it inside of his defences, to that place of greatest tender pain, and he almost could feel again the way it had felt to have the man's magic breaking over him, foaming and rolling around him.

A lengthy pause had elapsed by the time Pellew broke his gaze away and cleared his throat.

"Yes, I think in fact his assistance will not be necessary," he said gruffly, briefly showing his face in profile as he threw a quick backwards look at Bracegirdle.

"Aye aye, sir," Bracegirdle murmured, infinitely placid. 

Bracegirdle had no sooner opened the cabin door than a boy's squeaky voice came from the doorway.

"Mr Harper's compliments, sir-"

Pellew turned. 

"-and will you come give your mark for the spell to be broken up, sir-" 

"I will come," said Pellew. "Doctor. If you would remain until my return."

"Of course."

Pellew's eyes settled briefly on Horatio. "I will not be long."

"You may feel warm, Hornblower," said old Gould, going to pick up the blanket from the corner, "but take care in these fluxions of the humours that your body does not become cold without your realising."

He settled the blanket about Horatio's shoulders.

"I'll have Mr Langley bring you something hot to drink." 

Gould went out to the after cabin and called for the captain's steward, and Horatio was glad to be alone, to have a moment to bring his body under control.

"Here we are," the doctor said, returning to the sleeping cabin with a tray. He handed Horatio the steaming cup of coffee and simultaneously the door opened in the after cabin and the captain stepped quickly inside.

"If you could leave us, Doctor."

The captain's manner was so brisk that Gould blinked at him from behind his spectacles.

"Certainly, Captain." The old man bent to pick up his case. He coughed into his hand, concealing a smile. "Certainly." 

"Mr Hornblower," Pellew called the moment the door had closed behind the doctor.

"Sir." Horatio set his untouched coffee aside and stood hastily, keeping the blanket around him.

"Come here, if you please." Pellew was pacing in front of his desk.

There was something wrong - Horatio knew with certainty as he stepped into the after cabin.

"It will be done with quickly," Pellew muttered under his breath. 

Horatio stood waiting. 

Pellew pulled up short. Behind the man's stern expression Horatio saw some conflict of emotion was raging. Pellew turned his head aside, clasped his hands firmly behind his back, then said stiffly,

"It is the nature of the service that we must sometimes do things we most strongly do not wish to do. You mean to be an officer in His Majesty's Navy, Mr Hornblower. The duties of an officer must come before his personal wishes - you understand this to be so?"

"Yes, sir," Horatio said softly, too exhausted just then to attempt to guess what had brought about this alteration in his captain's manner during the short time he had spent up on deck.

"You have placed your trust in me once already this evening." Pellew walked slowly towards him. "I must ask you to do so again." He stopped in front of Horatio. "You must understand..." His voice grew quieter now. "This will be temporary. And you have my word that no harm will come of you."

Horatio waited, gazing at the captain steadily.

Pellew shifted his stance restlessly, his agitated energy not permitting him to be still. He looked aside and said rapidly, "I must ask you to go into the ship's cells."

Somehow, in spite of the hesitant hopes that Horatio had been harbouring, a part of him had been expecting this order, and he felt strangely numb now as he heard it given. 

_A captain must first think of his ship._ How many times had Pellew spoken to him words to that effect?

And what had Horatio been expecting? He looked inwardly at those hopes he had lately been clinging to and inwardly he curled his lip at them. What - had he thought the captain would allow him to remain in his cabin until his heat burned itself out? Had he thought that the great man would attend him? His hormones must have addled his mind even more than he realised, causing him to imagine things and take them for reality. Pellew had acted purely out of necessity.

His stomach lurched unpleasantly as he recalled the way he had behaved in the captain's sleeping cabin. How he had exulted in the man's magic touching him. How he had practically kissed his hand! Was it any wonder the captain's manner was now so strained?

"I understand, sir," Horatio said woodenly.

Pellew was standing so close, those dark eyes flickering as he studied Horatio's face closely, and Horatio stared past the captain's shoulder, fighting to control his expression, to absorb this bruising blow with the stoicism that befit an officer. If he was wounded by this order from his captain, it was only because of his own vanity and foolishness.

"It will not be long," Pellew said. 

"Yes, sir." Horatio knew that the captain was merely trying to comfort him. He knew that he would be spending the night and at least the next day in a cell with walls that would seem to shrink in on him, and the time there would pass slowly indeed.

And still Horatio was numb. Yielding up the spell had left him wrung out and raw. 

_The duties of an officer must come before his personal wishes,_ Horatio repeated to himself, forcing his back straight. He almost took the blanket from his shoulders but then thought better of it. He looked at Pellew and attempted a soldierly nod.

"Will I go now, sir?"

Pellew's expression had softened. "I will take you," he said quietly. Then he went into the sleeping cabin and returned in short order with a white handkerchief, which he gave to Horatio.

*

There were plenty of men up on deck, at work dismantling the conduction spell around the main mast, their dark forms moving with quick efficiency in the lantern light.

The marine walked ahead of Horatio and the captain. Pellew had put on his hat and his cloak, lending the moment a strange sense of ceremony. The cool breeze flapped the edges of his cloak, as it did Horaito's blanket which he still had clutched about him at the doctor's instance. He found he was shivering even as his skin felt so unnaturally hot.

Their presence on deck was quickly noticed, the men and the officers pausing in their work. Horatio kept his eyes lowered until they had reached the cells.

The marine unlocked and opened the cell gate. Horatio paused, staring into the black rectangle of shadow within.

The captain's arm brushed lightly against his, drawing Horatio's attention away. 

Pellew cast a surreptitious eye about the ship. Their calm procession to the cells had been well-observed. He looked at Horatio, the whites of his eyes glinting faintly in the gloom.

"Well, Mr Hornblower," he said.

"Aye aye, sir," Horatio whispered miserably.

The captain's hand caught Horatio's arm suddenly. 

"All will be well," Pellew said in an undertone.

Horatio firmed his jaw and stepped into the cell. At once the dampening spells on the walls reached out to touch him. They were not so strong as those he had known on Justinian and he found he could go on walking.

Employing the same force of will which had enabled him to walk along the maintopsail yard of the Papillon with no foot ropes, he pressed on, placing one foot in front of the other. Crushed tight in his hand was the handkerchief, gripped as though it were a lifeline. In a moment he had reached the back wall of the tiny cell. He stopped and slowly turned.

There was the kingly figure of the captain in his cloak and hat standing outside the doorway as the cell gate was closed by the marine. 

Horatio pressed his back to the wall.

The marine guard turned the lock and stepped smartly away.

Pellew stood looking in at the cell for a moment. Horatio could not make out his expression in the darkness.

Then as if recollecting something or having come to some final decision, the captain turned and walked stiffly away.

Horatio turned his face to the wall and lifted the handkerchief to face, buried his nose and mouth in it and breathed the scent. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine that he was still in Pellew's cabin. He longed for that nook between the captain's cot and the bulkhead. With a flush of shame he remembered the captain kneeling in front of him, he remembered how it had felt to lean into him while Pellew's arms had been around him.

_"You mean to be an officer in His Majesty's Navy, Mr Hornblower."_

The captain's words returned to him. Horatio straightened himself with an effort, bracing himself against the bulkhead so that he was not collapsed against it. He carefully turned the handkerchief in his hand, at pains to preserve Pellew's scent on it. The captain had been kind to give it to him.

*

Horatio woke to someone shaking his shoulder.

"Mr Hornblower." Bracegirdle was leaning over him. "Come on, lad."

Horatio let the lieutenant help him to his feet. He still had the blanket around his shoulders, and Pellew's handkerchief in his hand.

"Sir? What-?"

"Captain's waiting." Bracegirdle kept a hold of Horatio's elbow, drawing him along.

The marine sentry was standing holding the door open. It looked to be the dead of night.

Horatio felt weak with relief as he came out from the cell, the spells inside falling off him.

Bracegirdle guided him along without pause across the maindeck, to the companionway that led to the captain's cabin. Horatio lifted his head bewilderedly and saw shapes of the men on the quarterdeck, but he had not time for any impressions beyond that as they started down the steps and Horatio required all his concentration in order to place his feet so as not to fall and break his neck.

"There we are. Good lad." Bracegirdle spoke quietly to him once they were down the companionway. His hand was on Horatio's back shepherding him along.

There was no marine sentry posted outside the captain's cabin.

Bracegirdle rapped on the door and the captain himself pulled it open.

Pellew took Horatio by the arm.

"Thank you, Mr Bracegirdle."

Bracegirdle touched his hat and withdrew.

Pellew quickly shut the door and Horatio stood blinking in the warm lantern light of the cabin after the darkness of the deck. 

"Come and sit down, sir. Sit yourself down."

Horatio sat in the chair that was set out in front of the desk. Pellew handed him a glass of red wine and told him to drink it. The captain's jacket, his hat and his cloak, all hung on their hooks by the door. Pellew's appearance now, as he paced back and forth, back and forth in front of Horatio, differed markedly from the formality and finery he had put on to lead Horatio to the cells.

As Horatio drank, he reasoned that no more than an hour could have elapsed. His thumb worried at the handkerchief he kept hold of in his free hand.

Pellew was watching with a hawkish eye as Horatio took his last swallow of the wine. He put out his hand for the glass, and Horatio handed it to him. Setting the glass aside, Pellew reached for a folded nightshirt that was on the desk, and he gave it to Horatio.

"Sir?"

"Your shirt is torn."

Horatio pulled his shirt up over his head. It was indeed torn at the neck, and he had sweated in it and it had picked up stains through all it had endured that evening.

Gooseflesh rose on Horatio's arms as he sat naked from the waist up, fumbling with the clean shirt, the blanket wrapped loosely about his thighs. As he pulled the shirt on, Pellew's scent tumbled over him, spreading a warm reaction all through him. 

"I hope that-"

Horatio looked at Pellew, as the man frowned and looked down at the deck as he paced.

"I hope that you did not find your time in the cell too trying." Pellew came to a halt in front of Horatio.

"No, sir," said Horatio.

"Don't lie to me, man." Pellew touched Horatio's cheek suddenly. "How pale you are!"

Horatio stared up at him in surprise. Pellew looked at Horatio's hands where he was clutching the handkerchief in his lap.

"You must realise - if there had been another way -" Pellew's expression darkened, and when he spoke again his voice was low, almost dangerous. "I would not have ordered you into that cell for anything." He closed his eyes for a beat, pained. "But the men- That they saw you throw off so many men - and my officers... It was necessary that they see order restored. A ship must have order. A captain's control must be seen to be absolute."

"I understand, sir," Horatio said.

Pellew looked at him sharply. "Do you?"

Horatio began to answer, but then the captain reached out and touched him lightly under the jaw, stroking the sensitive scent glands there which were swollen and aching as a result of the heat. Horatio's breath caught in his throat. He tipped his head as the captain stimulated the glands with a gentle probing touch. 

"You have shown tremendous strength, Mr Hornblower," Pellew murmured. "But then, I expected no less from you." He stroked Horatio's face, his thumb following the curve of Horatio's eyebrow, down his cheek. Horatio could smell his own scent on Pellew's fingers. As he looked at the captain he saw with a jolt that the man was aroused. 

The blanket had fallen open across Horatio lap and his own erection tenting his breeches must have been obvious for some time.

"Come," Pellew said, motioning for him to stand.

Horatio stood, and they were face-to-face, their bodies close.

"Mr Hornblower..." Pellew placed a hand on Horatio's hip and drew him gently against his body. Horatio shuddered as his erection was acquainted with Pellew's through their breeches.

"You will forgive me for being forward..." Pellew's nose almost brushed Horatio's, their faces were so close.

Horatio had placed his hands on the captain's chest to steady himself and he removed them. His hunger to be touched and held was in rebellion against his instinct never to offend the dignity of this man.

"At your ease," Pellew said softly, his hand pressing the small of Horatio's back. So close and warm, his expression so lively with affection, his prick stiff against Horatio's hip, he was a man, he was the man who had seen something in Horatio, nurtured him, taught him, shown him more affection than Horatio had ever known even from his own father.

Pellew's hand came again to the side of Horatio's neck, his knuckles very gently brushing his glands. "You're swollen. Does it give you much pain?"

Horatio shook his head.

Pellew leant in and breathed Horatio's scent under his jaw and then the hot wet gentle suction of Pellew's mouth made Horatio gasp.

His hands were on the captain's shoulders, grasping his shirt.

"It would be my honour to attend you, Mr Hornblower." Pellew drew back, a faint frown creasing his brows. "I had assumed- That is - I hope I am not mistaken..." He considered Horatio closely. "Is it your wish that I do so?"

"Yes, sir," Horatio said breathlessly. "Thank you, sir."

*

In the sleeping cabin, they undressed. 

Horatio hesitated at the idea of removing the nightshirt which hung past his knees. To take it off would leave him entirely naked. He placed one hand awkwardly in front his penis tenting the nightshirt.

The captain was unfastening the dark cravat at his throat. 

"Keep it on you wish," he said, and he nodded to the cot for Horatio to sit. 

The intimacy of seeing the captain this way, matter-of-factly removing off his clothing, was somewhat shocking. Horatio darted shy looks at him as he set his waistcoat aside, slid his breeches and stockings down his calves, one leg and then the other. 

When he finished, he wore only his shirt and his drawers.

He sat by Horatio and directed him to lie down. 

"Have you been pinned before?"

"No, sir." Horatio settled his head on the pillow, put his hands awkwardly over his erection, his face burning, striving to seem unconcerned. "Not - not by an alpha, sir."

"Have you lain with a man?"

"No, sir," said Horatio, unable to look at Pellew, surprised even at the question. Then he felt a rush of scorn and helpless rage with himself, that he was so childish. Pellew was about to lay with him now. It was about to happen. It didn't seem quite real. The only certain thing seemed to be that Horatio was about to humiliate himself.

"You have nothing to fear," Pellew said. 

He then put his scent on Horatio. 

He did this by wiping his fingers under his jaw, over his scent glands, and then touching his fingers to Horatio's face. He touched Horatio's cheeks, his chin, he stroked his thumb over Horatio's lips and the soft skin under the nose. The cabin seemed to tilt as over and over Horatio inhaled the scent of him.

"I wish that you had come to me," Pellew murmured. "You should not have borne such pain."

Horatio closed his eyes, struggling to order his thoughts. Pellew stroked his hair, smoothing it back from his forehead, then he was caressing Horatio's neck, his glands, and Horatio released a shaky breath through his nose and pressed his head very slightly back into the pillow.

"I thought I could let one of my officers have you." Pellew's voice was so low he might have been talking to himself. There was a growl in it that made Horatio shiver. "I was wrong." 

Then Pellew took his hand away.

"Let's have this pin then," he said. "Come. Turn on your belly."

Horatio did it, and Pellew climbed over him and settled behind him on the narrow cot and hugged Horatio from behind, his body half on top of Horatio, his arms around him. 

Everything about the embrace - the weight of Pellew's body on him, Pellew's scent all over him - was like being enfolded, like being in that little corner by the cot, but a hundred times better. 

Horatio was trapped and embraced, utterly taken into an alpha's care, protected. The captain's weight and his arms around him squeezing him, holding him, crushing him wonderfully into something molten hot.

It became too much somehow. Horatio's hand found Pellew's arm and he touched him, felt for a moment the coarse hair on the man's warm skin. He only had to touch him and Pellew seemed to know the pin was done, and he loosened his hold and gave Horatio room to turn. 

Horatio's throat was aching - it was his glands. Without thinking, he stretched and pushed his head back into the bedding and showed his neck, asking to be touched with the slow flex of his body, and Pellew obliged him at once.

"My dear boy," he murmured, his fingers stroking over his glands sensitively. It was unmistakably a masculine touch, and Horatio's cock was very hard now, twitching on his belly, twitching in response to each slow caress of captain's fingers on his neck. He swallowed and his Adam's apple shifted under the captain's warm palm and he parted his lips and breathed, tried to breathe quietly.

It was too much, again - Horatio found he was shaking all over, and he made an abortive movement of his hand to reach down and hide to himself, hide his penis, swollen and so hot and jumping with a will of its own under his nightshirt. Pellew would see, and it seemed utterly too shameful, even if the man must know already by Horatio's scent alone that he was excited.

 _Sir,_ he meant to say. He wanted to plead. But he could not speak.

"There now," Pellew murmured, moving over him again, somehow knowing. He climbed half on top of him and brought his thigh in between Horatio's thighs and he put his head down and breathed hot against Horatio's glands and kissed them. His kisses were slow and hot and just a bit wet, and Horatio couldn't keep still. 

His hands were gripped tight in Pellew's shirt and his hips were moving artlessly, rubbing himself up against Pellew's thigh. 

Pellew lay down on his side, draw Horatio's body against him, and he spoke low words of encouragement as Horatio clung to him and rubbed his cock up against Pellew shamelessly. It was in blind hunger that he nosed under the captain's jaw, guilelessly taking such liberties, and tasted the alpha's neck with shy touches of his tongue, mouthing the glands there like he was tasting honey. He could feel the thump of Pellew's pulse under his lips, the life pulse of this brilliant man who he so admired, whom he loved.

"Horatio..." Pellew spoke his name in a rumble from deep within his chest, almost accusingly, and Horatio realised he had reached for the man with his magic, and his magic seemed to be animated by the same pulsing need as his cock, a beseeching animal hunger as well as some deep, almost frightening nameless emotion.

"Forgive me...sir..." Horatio come barely get the words out.

Pellew's magic was touching him in return.

"How sweet your touch is," Pellew said, and then he kissed Horatio's mouth. His words were as stunning to Horatio as the kiss.

Horatio knew that the captain was complementing his magic, but to hear it spoken of in this way was strange. Aboard a frigate, magic was used in the daily course of working the ship. Horatio had never touched anybody in this way before, he had never reached out so greedily, as if he were devouring some delicious food. 

Pellew was seeking out that place where the thorn had been, Horatio realised. He could feel it from how Pellew was touching him inside. He led Pellew to the wound, and the journey was much simpler this time around. When the captain touched him there, Horatio gasped at the throb of almost-pain.

"Did I hurt you?" Pellew leant up on his elbow at once, his look alert and repentant.

"No, sir." Horatio shuddered. "It only - it feels-"

There was pain, but it was exquisite, to be touched by Pellew's magic inside, where he had carried such a deep hurt. 

He realised he wanted the touch again, and Pellew's expression changed, and inwardly he reached for Horatio again, caressed that tender place which was like an arrow in Horatio's breast. Horatio twisted and arched against him in reaction, rubbing his cock up against Pellew's thigh.

Horatio's nightshirt had come up and both of their hands moved to it, their hands bumping as they both reached down. Horatio realised Pellew meant to lift it away entirely, to see him naked, and he held onto the nightshirt and writhed inwardly with shame, his mind racing - this was the whole point of this, that the captain would have him _that way_ , the captain was doing him a kindness, and here he was balking so early on, when they had barely even begun. But the thought that Pellew would see him, his pubic hair, his cock so shamelessly stiff and swollen, his balls, his whole nakedness - it was unimaginable.

"Horatio," Pellew breathed. He let Horatio keep hold of the nightshirt and kissed his face. "Let me pin you again."

That was a great relief. Horatio almost melted with relief. He twisted gladly over onto his belly, his hard cock squished under him against the bedding, and then Pellew was over him, and inwardly their magics writhed and turned together like two snakes.

Horatio felt drunk with sensation, and he rubbed himself helplessly against the bedding.

The captain stroked his hand up Horatio's outer thigh and drew the nightshirt up, and this was fine, Horatio did not mind that nakedness so terribly. He squirmed his hips against the ticking as Pellew gathered the nightshirt at the small of his back and the cool air stirred against his naked buttocks.

Pellew lay on top of him, rocked his covered hips into him, rubbing against Horatio's buttocks, and it was a revelation again to feel the shape of the captain's prick hot and stiff through his drawers.

Horatio felt Pellew lean down over him, and then Pellew's mouth closed on his neck, biting him gently.

Horatio's orgasm blew through him like wind suddenly bellying a sail full, gusting great blows that shook the sheet.

When it passed Horatio lay panting, and he became aware of the rhythmic steady brush of Pellew's knuckles against his buttock and he recognised with a jolt what the captain was doing - that he was stroking himself off. 

An instant later a splash of hot seed landed on Horatio's backside, with a quiet grunt from Pellew, and his knuckle bumped against Horatio a couple times more as he tugged himself through the last of it with a deep, uneven sigh.

It was somehow deeply shocking to know this truth - that a man as great as the captain touched himself like that and reached his crisis like that, just the same as Horatio did on nights in his hammock in the Midshipman's berth. 

When he had finished, Pellew braced his hand next to Horatio's ribs and Horatio made room for the man to lie down. Pellew reclined on his back and Horatio stayed as he was, on his belly.

With his cheek in the bedding, blinking sleepily, Horatio studied the noble line of the man's profile in the soft lantern light. Pellew's eyes were closed, his lips parted as he breathed. The neck of his shirt was spread open revealing the hair on his chest. 

"You examine me, sir," the captain murmured, frowning though his eyes remained closed. The thread of humour in his voice was plain.

"Yes, sir," Horatio said, half asleep.

Pellew turned his head to look at him.

Horatio felt fingers touching the tumble of his curls that were tied loosely with a ribbon at the nape of his neck.

He woke again as Pellew climbed carefully over him. He turned his head and watched as the captain went into the after cabin. When Pellew returned he had a damp cloth in his hand. He sat and wiped Horatio clean, the cool dampness pleasant on Horatio's flushed skin.

"Sleep now," Pellew said.

And Horatio did.

*

"Ah - Horatio-"

Fingers curled gently in his hair at the crown of his head, the low rasp of the captain's voice.

"M-Mr Hornblower -" 

Horatio came more fully awake, and aware that he had been drooling in his sleep. His face was hot and sweaty, his mouth and chin damp with saliva, and he realised he had in fact been sucking on the bed sheets. He lifted his head muzzily, licking his lips, and found that his body was draped across captain Pellew's. A moment after that, he realised that he had not been sucking on the bedding at all, but on Pellew's nipple through the thin fabric of his shirt.

"I must go above," Pellew said. He passed his thumb across Horatio's damp mouth.

Horatio heard the captain's words, but somehow they failed to properly penetrate the fog that was on his mind.

"I will return presently."

Horatio tightened his arm around the man, suddenly comprehending that Pellew meant to leave him. He rested his chin on Pellew's breast for a moment, peering up at him from under his brows, then when the captain did not immediately move to rise, Horatio bent his head and returned to his business, nosing at Pellew's breast and finding the damp patch of linen and the nub of the man's nipple beneath it and sealing his mouth over it, bathing the nipple lovingly with his tongue, the barrier of the linen somewhat frustrating, rubbing wet and warm against Horatio's tongue and rubbing Pellew's nipple.

"Ah-" Pellew's grip tightened in Horatio's hair and the man's cock twitched where it was trapped under Horatio's belly. "Jesus Chr-" the captain huffed out, the blasphemy dying on his tongue. His hand slid around the back of Horatio's neck, under the sweaty gathered hair, squeezing there, and Horatio sighed and suckled and ground his hips lazily against the captain, content that the alpha would not leave him.

But too soon Pellew's hand was gently guiding Horatio's head off, and he was saying, "I must, I must" and making to sit up. Try as he might, Horatio could not speak, could not plead with him to stay - the faculty of language seemed to have deserted him entirely. Frantically, he clung to Pellew.

" _Mr Hornblower,_ " the captain rumbled as Horatio hid his head against his chest. "I will not be long." A note of authority came into his voice, the tone of command natural to an alpha, that could not be ignored. "You will remain here. Until my return."

The captain gently pushed him away and stood from the cot. Horatio watched miserably as Pellew pulled on his clothes. The captain brushed Horatio's cheek with his knuckles, and then he was gone.

After some time wriggling restlessly against the bedding, Horatio's nose located Pellew's handkerchief hiding in the folds of the blanket and he bit and sucked it while he rubbed his penis against the bedding, breathing hot breaths into the handkerchief, almost tearful with frustration.

It seemed an impossibly long time before Horatio heard the click of the cabin door. Pellew's shadow fell across him. The captain was taking off his jacket as he came to the cot, bringing the smell of rain and the sea and the chilly night with him. 

"There now," Pellew said breathlessly, opening his breeches. Horatio turned his head, the handkerchief wet under his cheek. Pellew's fingers touched his wet mouth and Horatio licked them tasting the salt on them. Horatio could smell Pellew's arousal. He was drawn irresistibly to the gap of Pellew's breeches. He leant up on his elbow and gripped the breeches at Pellew's thigh as he leant in and put his face into Pellew's crotch and breathed.

"Horatio-" The captain's voice rasping his name combined with the musky scent of him caused Horatio to shudder.

Pellew's hands guided him away gently and Horatio thought he might come apart with need, he kissed and licked the man's hands trying to get beyond them and bury himself again in that musky scent of arousal.

"Here, boy," Pellew said roughly, lifting up his shirt with one hand, guiding Horatio to his nipple with the other, and Horatio needed no further instruction, closing his hot mouth over the nipple. Dimly he heard the captain curse.

Horatio sucked his nipple and moved his hands restlessly over the man's warm torso, and Pellew's shirt dropped for a moment over Horatio's face, and it was nice, to be hidden there and latched onto the alpha's nipple, safe. 

Then Pellew lifted the shirt and pulled up off over his head and tossed it aside. Horatio grumbled quietly at the movement which disturbed the seal of his wet mouth over Pellew's flesh. He prodded the nub of the man's nipple with his tongue and Pellew's hand was in his hair, fisted in his hair, not hard, but not gently.

"Come," Pellew breathed roughly. "Come, boy."

Horatio's mouth came away with a wet sound and Horatio was unhappy for a moment and then Pellew's hand in his hair was guiding their faces close and Pellew's mouth met his in a hot kiss and his tongue was stroking rhythmically into Horatio's mouth and Horatio was suckling that.

Pellew's hands were under Horatio's nightshirt, stroking up his back, cupping and squeezing his buttocks, and Horatio moaned shakily against the man's mouth.

Pellew drew Horatio's nightshirt up to his breast and held it there out of the way, and he looked at Horatio. He passed his free hand down Horatio's naked side, holding him by the hip. The captain's dark eyes flickered down as he regarded Horatio's body, then he stepped close and drew Horatio against him again and kissed him, slower now.

Then it was as if for a moment the sun had broken through heavy clouds and Horatio saw himself, he saw as if he were an outside observer. The way he was behaving - it crashed down on him all at once how mad he was being. Some part of him knew he was delirious, stupefied by the fever. 

Slowly, he sank down to rest on his heels, burning with shame and arousal. He held the nightshirt bundled in his lap, over his erection, and he stared down at his exposed pale thighs in dizzy confusion.

"What is it? Horatio?"

Horatio looked up at the captain.

Pellew was frowning faintly. He stroked Horatio's cheek. "It's alright." He took Horatio by the shoulders and drew him against him, embracing him gently, and Horatio wrapped his arms around him blindly, fiercely. 

His vision was blurry with tears, his physical frustration greater than he had ever known. He squirmed and began to rub against the man even as he clung to him, even as he tried to stop himself.

Pellew put him down on the cot and pinned him again. It was painful to be trapped and restrained even as it was perfectly what Horatio wanted. Horatio squirmed and murmured unhappily into the bedding as his magic stormed and whirled, searching for Pellew, breaking over the man's walls, calling for him, desperate for his touch, but Pellew would not come to him now. He was panting against Horatio's neck.

"I can't - I can't, my darling -"

Pellew's teeth closed on his neck and Horatio cried out hoarsely as he came to his crisis. It wasn't enough, he knew it while the throbs of it were still moving through him.

Pellew's hands on his shoulder, his ribs, coaxed him onto his side, and Pellew spoke gently to him to console him. Horatio felt the man was as naked as himself, wearing only his shirt. The soft wiry hairs on Pellew's legs felt strange against Horatio's.

Horatio's seed was all up his belly. Pellew rubbed against him, and Horatio, still erect and needy, answered him in the slow sensual wrestling of it, Pellew's hands guiding him, teaching him how their bodies could struggle together in this way, a rhythmic struggling, strange and compelling, their cocks sliding against one another and against their bellies.

Horatio's magic arched and rolled against the captain's defences like a serpent, slippery and hot, beseeching, and Pellew swore and put Horatio onto his back and lay over him, kissing his mouth roughly, his hot tongue sliding between Horatio's parted lips.

"You will drive me mad, by god!" he growled. He sat up. 

Horatio's shirt was rucked up his chest. Pellew lifted it further so that Horatio's nipples were exposed. The captain's gaze travelling over Horatio's body.

"I was a fool to tell myself I would not have you." 

Horatio's cock was lifting and falling against his hip bone, glossy wet at the tip and not in the least ashamed of itself, even as Horatio's dulled inhibitions were attempting to fight their way to the surface, his usual reticence shouting at him from somewhere within to cover himself.

The captain lay his arm across Horatio's belly and lay down in a comfortable pose so that he may lower his head between Horatio's thighs and with his fingers guide that impudent cock into his mouth.

Horatio could think of nothing then. His hands were in the captain's hair.

Now and then he managed to lift his head to gather fevered impressions of the captain's head between his legs, the captain's mouth devouring him. 

The sweet suck on his cock was like nothing he had ever known. The captain handled his balls gently, rubbed his thumb down behind his balls, and then down, down to where Horatio was most ashamed, and Horatio reached his crisis then, blurting his seed rudely on the man's lips.

Pellew continued to touch him between his thighs, stroking his fingers gently into the cleft of his buttocks, and Horatio moaned, clenching and jumping, the shocks of his orgasm still working through him. 

Pellew urged him quietly and Horatio rolled onto his belly stupefied, his limbs all made of jelly. 

"There we are," Pellew murmured, his hands spreading Horatio's buttocks, spreading him so he could see him there, and Horatio could only hide his burning face in the ticking, for he knew he was slick there, in _that_ place. It was aching there, and it was sticky wet. This had occurred only a couple of times before during his heats, and even now in his fevered state Horatio was ashamed it had happened.

Pellew lay over him and insinuated his cock between Horatio's buttocks and Horatio went burning hot all over, thinking this was it. Pellew would do it now. He would sodomise him. 

But Pellew only slid his cock into the cleft of Horatio's buttocks and rode into the cleft. He spoke to him as he did it, low words of praise, while his cock became slick with what Horatio's body made, the excretion like hot butter. 

The eroticism of it was overwhelming Horatio, confusing him in the midst of his humiliation. The excretion ought to invite the strongest disgust, but coating Pellew's cock in this way and spreading all slippery over his buttocks and inner thighs, it was wonderful.

A couple of times Pellew slowed and paused, breathed, and he patted the bulb of his penis against Horatio's entrance and prodded slightly where it was so hot and wet and Horatio lifted his head from the sheets and stared blindly ahead, holding his breath, his hole clenching fearfully against the man's penis just resting there, the muscles of his buttocks bunching nervously under Pellew's hand. Would this be it? Would it be now?

As he waited, more hot mucus would escape him, and then Pellew would stroke his hand soothingly over Horatio's buttock and murmur to him and resume the maddening measured slippery roll of his cock between Horatio's cheeks.

Finally Horatio pushed himself up onto his hands, and then Pellew's chest was against his back, both of them hot and sweating, and Pellew's hand stroked Horatio's belly, and his cock wormed back and forth, back and forth, stroking behind Horatio's balls, and Horatio's thighs were quivering and he was so wet. 

He called for Pellew in his mind, feeling sick with need, and the captain put his head against Horatio's with a rough moan of frustration, then he lowered his head and clamped his teeth to Horatio's neck and jogged his hips roughly until his seed striped Horatio's thighs. When he was done, his arms folded either side of them and they went down together.

"I know," Pellew said raggedly. "You must forgive me." 

He made Horatio turn over. Horatio's hips flexed as Pellew's hand curled around his cock. He tried again in vain to touch Pellew's mind as the man jogged his fist, and when once again he was thwarted he dropped his head back, tears springing to his eyes. 

"I know, my darling," Pellew said, his voice low with sympathy, imploring, "I know." Then he took Horatio's cock in his mouth and it was too much pleasure.

*

Horatio woke to the feeling of another body pressed up against his back, a man's chest warm against his back, a leg thrown over his calf, an arm draped over his ribs. 

He closed his eyes, listening to Pellew's slow even breathing.

*

"I will be out presently."

He woke hearing the gravely murmur of the captain's voice.

"Very good, sir," said another voice - the captain's steward - in reply. 

Horatio felt Pellew's body move behind him, a cold stir of air as the blanket was disturbed. 

Horatio turned over. Pellew was sitting on the edge of the cot, pulling his shirt on over his head. The faintest dawn light from the after cabin gave the air a tinge of ghostly blue.

Pellew's hair was standing up in wild tufts in places and he absently smoothed his hand over it as he turned to look at Horatio. His brow quirked faintly as he found Horatio was awake and watching him. He pulled the blanket up as he stood, tucking it more closely about Horatio, leaning over him.

"Sleep a little longer."

He touched Horatio's cheek, and Horatio found his eyelids were heavy, trying to fall closed each time he blinked.

It seemed as if barely a minute passed, but when next Horatio opened his eyes the cabin was illuminated in grey daylight, and the doctor was standing over him. Pellew was there as well, now fully-dressed and very tidy. 

"Good morning, Mr Hornblower," said Gould. How long they had been there, Horatio could not say.

Horatio struggled up into a sitting position, the events of the previous day and night rushing into his mind all at once.

"Sir," he managed to mumble. He realised he was not wearing anything - he had only the blanket covering him.

"And how are we feeling, sir?" 

"Very well, thank you, sir," Horatio said, his mouth producing the words automatically, his panic and his subsequent impulse to strangle that panic lending his speech an odd solemnity. 

"Yes, a nice cold bath, I think," said Gould, turning to Pellew.

"Right," said the captain, lifting his chin. "Yes. Very well. Mr Hornblower."

Horatio looked nervously at the captain.

"You'll go with the doctor...above." Pellew gave Horatio a small nod, and Horatio realised that he must now move, and stiffly he got his legs over the side of the cot, his feet on the cold deck. There he paused, holding the blanket at his waist in a rigid grip.

"Where's Langley now?" said Pellew impatiently.

Gould went to the door. "Mr Langley!"

Horatio met Pellew's gaze for a moment. The captain's eyes were full of sympathy, and he parted his lips to speak, but then the steward came and the small cabin was bustling and overcrowded.

*

In the grey morning light, Horatio followed Gould and Walters the marine officer across the deck to where the headpump had been rigged up. He wore a nightgown which Langley, the captain's steward, had provided for him, and Langley himself was following close behind Horatio.

There were men holystoning the maindeck, and all of them looked up from their work as they noticed the procession.

Langley took the gown from Horatio at the pump and Horatio stood shivering while Walters and another man worked the handle, calling up a cold spattering spray of seawater from overside.

"Under you go, lad," said Gould, his thumbs tucked comfortably in his waistcoat.

"You men there - about your work!" Bracegirdle bellowed from the quarterdeck, and the gritty scrub-scrub-scrub of holystoning resumed.

Horatio stepped under the cascade of water, his breath rushing out of him with the sharp shock of the cold water. He rubbed his hands over himself quickly, turning clumsily in the spray, closing his eyes against the water.

"All over, now," Gould called, and Langley came and stood with the gown spread and that way gave Horatio a sort of a curtain, and hastily, forcing himself to ignore the presence of the men, Horatio washed his private parts in the water, the flesh of his thighs and between his buttocks, slippery under the rivets of water, and he scrubbed his hands all down himself as best he could until his skin felt clean.

When Gould was satisfied, the pump was stopped, the gown wrapped around Horatio, and Gould and Langley escorted him back across the deck, past the men staring and talking where they knelt with their holystones and buckets.

In the cabin the captain was waiting, standing ramrod straight, his hands clasped behind him. The table had been laid for breakfast. Pellew sent Langley away and it became clear that the doctor meant to examine Horatio. 

It was done there in the main cabin. The doctor lightly pressed his fingers along Horatio's neck and throat, examining the swelling of the glands. 

"Your hand," Gould said with a gesture to his brow to indicate that he meant to examine Horatio's magic.

Horatio held out the hand in his mind and the doctor took it firmly in his and turned it this way and that. Now that the worst of the heat had passed, Horatio's inner self did not recoil or raise any protest at all at this mundane touch. He waited passively as the doctor prodded at him, and Pellew stood nearby, his eyes moving from the doctor to Horatio.

"Very good," said Gould at length.

The very worst part came next, when Horatio was instructed to turn and face the desk. The doctor lifted the dressing gown and placed a hand on Horatio's rump. Horatio very nearly jumped away from him in surprise. 

"There's a good lad," the doctor muttered, briefly spreading one buttock with his thumb in order to peer at that most intimate place. Horatio stared blindly down at the furled stack of maps on the captain's desk.

"Perfectly fine," said Gould in a staid tone of voice that might have been remarking on a piece in the Gentleman's Magazine. "A day's rest, and he'll have his wits about him again." Then to Horatio's great relief he took his hand away.

Horatio turned back to face the two men, his head down and his face hot with embarrassment.

"Will that be all, Doctor?" said Pellew.

"Well now...if I may, sir..."

Pellew nodded impatiently for the doctor to go on, then caught himself as he grasped the significance of the doctor's hesitation.

"Wait in my cabin, if you please, Mr Hornblower."

"Aye, sir."

Horatio retreated gratefully to the sleeping cabin and found that it smelled of sex. He could not pause long in the doorway. He went in and sat on the cot. His limbs felt very cold from his shower, his hair dripped cold saltwater on him, and he badly wanted to curl up on the cot and sleep. The quiet murmured conversation of the two men in the main cabin might as well have been happening in another world.

Horatio wondered what the other midshipmen were doing at this moment, what duties he himself would have presently been engaged in had it been an ordinary day.

"You'll join me for some breakfast, Mr Hornblower?" Pellew said, appearing in the doorway. 

"Yes, sir," said Horatio at once.

There was a pause as they regarded one another.

"Let's find you some dry clothes, eh?"

*

"Two more eggs for Mr Hornblower, Langley."

Horatio swallowed a lump of bread hastily, rasping out, "Oh no, please, sir -"

Pellew waved away his protests. "No, no. I am gratified to see you have an appetite."

Langley refilled their coffee cups before departing.

Horatio put his attention on his breakfast plate, taking special care as he cut his bacon. Everything seemed unreal. His own hands, his fingers gripping his knife and fork. His stomach was tight with nerves, but it seemed he was alone in his struggle to reconcile the events of the night before with the orderly arrangements of breakfast, the neatly-laid table, the collection of papers by the captain's bread plate which the man perused as he blew on his coffee.

If the captain felt any uneasiness he was showing none of it. But for Horatio, a mere midshipman, breakfasting alone with the captain would have meant exerting himself to show only his best aspect even under normal circumstances. Having spent the night with the captain, Horatio's mind was churning in ceaseless activity, pitilessly scrutinising his own behaviour, his every word, and fighting above all to avoid each inappropriate lurid recollection as it presented itself to him, fragments of what had happened appearing suddenly before his mind's eye like the fins and ridges of some leviathan threatening to rise from the depths.

The sound of eight bells being struck was followed shortly after by the appearance of Bracegirdle with his report from the quarterdeck.

"Thank you, Mr Bracegirdle," said the captain with a sniff. Bracegirdle inclined his head. He directed a small smile at Horatio before he withdrew.

When breakfast was done, the captain sent Horatio back into the sleeping cabin.

"I expect you are exhausted."

Pellew was surely himself exhausted. Horatio's mind chose this moment to supply him with an image of the captain's dark head between his thighs, his mouth full of Horatio's cock, the saliva glistening on Horatio's shaft and the captain's lips.

Horatio wasn't wholly conscious of what mumbled reply he managed to make.

Pellew inspected the fresh and tidy bedding on the cot with a sweep of his eye.

"You'll rest here today."

Horatio looked at the cot as well and came to the unpleasant realisation that the captain's steward had been in and done all this, had handled the stained sheets and carried them out, all without Horatio noticing, so preoccupied had he been with behaving properly at breakfast with the captain.

"Sir..." Horatio shifted his weight between his feet. "I don't want to impose on you, sir-"

"Then it's just as well you aren't." Pellew gestured to the cot. There was no resisting him, and once Horatio was under the clean blankets, there was no resisting his body's communication to him of how pleasantly full of breakfast he was, how wonderfully soft the cot was, and how pleasingly this all contrasted with the cold shock of the shower earlier.

"I hope you are feeling better?" Pellew said.

"Yes, sir." Horatio jaw worked as he suppressed a yawn. "Thank you, sir."

"And are you...in any discomfort?"

Horatio thought about that. The place on his neck where Pellew had bitten him in the night was throbbing and hot, and between his buttocks he was conscious of that strange ache.

"Hm?" Pellew prompted when he did not receive an immediate answer.

"No, sir. It's better since - since last night." Horatio looked up at the captain standing there. 

There was the ordinary, proper distance between them again now, and it seemed incredible to Horatio, the version of himself he had been in the night. He remembered with a shiver how it had felt, to be turned onto his belly, and the man's heavy weight pressing down on him- But no, he must not allow himself to remember, not in the captain's company. 

"Sir..." Horatio fiddled with the edge of the blanket then quickly forced himself to stop. "Please may I thank you, sir-"

"No need for that, now, Mr Hornblower."

"I fear you did not sleep at all, sir," Horatio said in a rush.

Pellew arched an eyebrow, a teasing little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and Horatio flushed as he realised he had said something lewd.

"A most lively evening, I'll grant you," said Pellew dryly, schooling his features into a look of idle indifference.

"I - I'm sorry, sir-" Horatio stammered.

"At your ease, boy." Pellew's eyes glinted in amusement.

Overhead, pipes shrilled and orders were shouted and there came a thumping of feet - a particular coalescence of activity that meant the ship was shortening sail.

"Rest now, Mr Hornblower."

"Aye aye, sir."

When Pellew was gone, Horatio wished for a moment that he was back at his own station, a part of the pulsing life of the ship. But then he turned over and nestled his head into the pillow, and it was blissful to allow his body to lure him away from consciousness and into sleep.

*

A cool hand was touching his forehead.

Horatio made a questioning noise in his throat, breathing thickly through his nose as he awoke. 

For a moment he was thoroughly disoriented, not immediately understanding why he was not in his hammock in the midshipmen's berth.

Pellew was sitting on the edge of the cot.

"Sir?" Horatio blinked in the dim lantern light. It seemed incredible, but a glance towards the windows in the main cabin confirmed that the day had faded away and it was already evening.

"How are you feeling, Mr Hornblower?" said the captain.

"Well, sir." Horatio cleared his throat, trying to gather his wits. He was conscious of a sharp discomfort owing to the need to relieve himself.

Pellew touched Horatio's jaw for a moment, and it was a pleasurable shock to feel the captain's fingers brush his scent glands.

Pellew's presence appeared suddenly in his mind. With his mind, the captain held out to him a woven piece of magic.

"This is a suppression spell," said Pellew brusquely. "A safe one. You will use it only in an emergency. The next time you come on, you will report yourself, is that understood?"

"Aye aye, sir."

Horatio accepted the spell in amazement, and as he and the captain touched, a lightning flash of energy lit the air between them, dazzling for an instant and then gone, like the flare of canon fire.

Pellew sat very stiff, leaning forward slightly as though he might stand. Horatio was on the verge of offering an apology, but then Pellew relaxed and cleared his throat, and continued on as if nothing strange had happened at all.

"I am also at pains to explain to you, Mr Hornblower..." He patted his knee restlessly. "Aboard my ship, an omega is not counted as a lesser man. Quite the reverse. When you are recovered, perhaps you would like to see for yourself, the ship's stores, which your cycle has furnished. Yes, I should think we will not want for fresh supply for two months or more."

Horatio examined his own hands on top of the blanket, his face growing unaccountably hot.

"Still you look away," said Pellew. At that, Horatio could hardly continue to avoid his gaze. "Do you think it can ever be wise to ignore such a force of nature?" Pellew said softly. "Hm? True seamanship means absolute respect for the elements, is that not so?"

"Yes, sir."

"You must respect the cycles of your own magic."

"Yes, sir."

"Good!" Pellew barked as he pushed to his feet, bringing that part of their discourse to a rather abrupt close. "Now I hope you will not mind-" He began to shrug his jacket from his shoulders. "-if I join you there to sleep."

Horatio made a stammering reply that he would not mind at all, and then somehow he managed to articulate the nature of his other trouble, and Pellew readily bade him use the captain's own private water closet.

When Horatio returned, Pellew was in his nightshirt. The captain put out the lantern and they lay together on the cot.

"The doctor has said" Pellew arranged the blankets around them "that I am to put my scent on you again. And by the morning you will be easier. Lie close, now."

The instruction made it all easier, but Horatio's body could not move gracefully as he squirmed on his side to bring himself close to the man. Horatio’s mood was quiet and awed, his mind still churning with what the captain had said, and he was overwhelmed to be sharing a bed with the man again, and this time without the delirium of his hormones to hide behind. 

Pellew's arm went around him and held him warm against him, and Horatio shuddered a little, and quickly he was ashamed to feel his body responding with excitement.

"You still have that spell, Mr Hornblower?" said Pellew.

Horatio took a moment to answer, wondering if the captain could really suppose he might have been careless enough to misplaced it already.

"Yes, sir."

"Let me see it, then."

Confused still, Horatio brought out the spell of suppression which Pellew had given him. It was easy enough to find - Pellew's signature in the weave of the magic fairly set it glowing. 

Horatio dutifully held out the spell for Pellew to inspect, and he drew a sharp breath as he felt the captain's hand touch it. They were touching with their minds, Horatio holding the spell, and Pellew examining it with careful passes of his hand.

Horatio was vibrating inwardly from the man's touches, feeling as if he were silver that was being slowly polished.

"Very good," said the captain, and then he was no longer inspecting the spell, he was touching Horatio.

Horatio's breath caught and he lay very still, not daring to move, but inwardly his magic rose like a cat arching its back to be petted and quickly the vine of Horatio's magic twined greedily around and around Pellew's. It was almost too much to touch the man so brazenly, and Horatio hid his face against Pellew's chest as the man gathered him close.

Pellew dabbed his fingers under his own jaw, and then he touched Horatio's face as he had done the night before, putting his scent on Horatio's mouth and chin, under his nose, and his warm, strong thigh was between Horatio's and Horatio's hips moved helplessly, rubbing his cock against the man's hip. He was amazed and dimly frightened by his own loss of control. Some thin version of the fog that had been on his mind the day before was on him again now.

Pellew pushed Horatio's nightshirt up his belly and his hand was a hot brand as it settled on Horatio's hip. 

"And then after...we must sleep..." Pellew said breathlessly, pulling his own shirt up as he lay on top of Horatio, the undulation of his hips masculine and assured, startling a soft exclamation of pleasure from Horatio as their cocks slid up against each other in greeting. 

Horatio realised he was clinging to the captain in his mind like a child to a beloved toy, and he tried to disentangle himself.

"No," said Pellew. His voice seemed to speak in Horatio's mind at the same moment, calling Horatio by his name, and Horatio flew to him, into his embrace, upset and wounded almost - it was painful somehow that the man had called to him, it stabbed at Horatio even to imagine himself failing to go to the man when he called him.

"No...my darling," Pellew murmured, kissing Horatio's mouth.

He lowered his head and pulled Horatio's shirt aside and put his mouth all soft and hot with his tongue over Horatio's nipple and Horatio gave a shout, shocking himself as much as the captain.

Pellew took a moment to establish that it was not painful, and then his mouth returned to the same nipple again, first with small touches of his tongue, and then sealing his mouth over it tenderly, and it was more sensitive there than Horatio had ever known it to be - even with Pellew's mouth sucking wet and gentle, it was painful, but that only made it confusingly more pleasurable, and Horatio shook as his cock spat warm excitement up his belly.

Pellew drew off, his fingers curled around Horatio's cock for a moment, satisfying himself that the boy had not spent himself but was only so slippery with arousal.

And then Pellew's hand slid around to take a handful of the soft flesh of Horatio's buttock and he drew them both onto their sides and held Horatio to him, encouraging him to thrust against him, his hand now and then cupping his buttock as Horatio rolled his hips impudently. Horatio's orgasm very nearly closed over him again, his breath coming short, his face blushing hot.

"Like this," Pellew panted. He lay on his back and his hands were stroking over Horatio's buttocks, his manner so assured and encouraging that somehow Horatio was emboldened to do as the captain wished and roll on top of him, the man's thighs open either side of his hips. Horatio rocked into the cradle of Pellew's hips impudently, his cock rubbing Pellew's cock trapped between their bellies.

Pellew grumbled with evident satisfaction and his hand stroked over the globe of Horatio's buttock, squeezing the soft flesh as Horatio's muscles bunched and eased. Looking down at this man, Horatio felt scandalised at himself for being so bold, for presuming to lay on top of him and do this.

Then Pellew's fingers were in the cleft of his arse and one fingertip was easing into Horatio's hole with each roll of Horatio's hips.

It was making Horatio wet. Not as much as the night before, but he could feel it happening, and instead of putting him off, it was driving him mad, and it was the rocking of his hips that controlled the pace of it. 

At the same time, Pellew was touching him with his magic, caressing him inside.

"I would not have the strength to hold myself back from you," Pellew said, speaking on an exhale, releasing the words as if he were releasing some black secret. "That is why I cannot take you fully. Do you understand?"

Horatio did not understand, but his crisis was almost upon him, and he must go over the edge with it, he must rock his hips back to take Pellew's finger deeper, he must thrust his cock against Pellew's hip faster, faster, he must twist and turn his magic so that Pellew can more fully caress him - he must not cry out-

He locked up as the spark finally cause the fuse, and the first leaping splash of seed came, then the next, his hips bucked spasmodically, he was entirely defeated by it, and Pellew's strong hand gripped his arse cheek like the only thing anchoring him to this world. 

Afterwards, he lay panting on Pellew's chest.

It had happened so many times the night before that his body knew at once what Pellew wanted when the man patted at his back and his ribs. Horatio climbed off him and lay on his front, and Pellew stroked his buttocks and slid his cock between his cheeks and lay over him, pinning him as he thrust between Horatio's cheeks, but again he did not penetrate him, and Horatio knew with hot shame that he was aching there, and wet there, because he desired it.

Pellew's magic had withdrawn from him after Horatio had found his release, and now Horatio felt the absence of it, but he did not dare call out for the man, and Pellew covered his back and pressed him, set his teeth to the side of Horatio's neck and bit him gently on the aching bruise as his thrusts jolted Horatio's body. As he came close to his crisis, Pellew drew back, and his cock eased free of the slippery seam between Horatio's thighs, and he brought himself off with his hand, panting as he spilt on Horatio's back.

He used his own nightshirt to wipe their bodies, then he did not seem troubled by his nakedness, and he drew the blanket over them both and draped his arm across Horatio. The ship's bell rang and it sounded very far away.

*

"Here, have mine, Horatio." Gifford slid a biscuit quickly onto Horatio's tray.

"That's really quite alright-" Horatio attempted to hand it back to the boy, but Gifford got up on his knees on the bench and hunched grinning over his tray.

"Here comes coffee!" said Andrew Clark cheerfully. "Horatio?" He was already on his feet, holding out Horatio's cup to be filled first by the cook's mate. 

"Thank you, but this is-" Horatio broke off, helplessly accepting the steaming cup as Clark handed it back to him with great care. 

"Dig in, then, lads," said Clark, rubbing his hands together.

Horatio cast his eye around the mess table, observing the boys all packed in close together, squabbling and laughing, their behaviour normal enough. He could not shake the impression that they were waiting for him to start eating first.

"Call all hands in fifteen minutes, gentlemen," came the call of the bosun's mate from the companionway. 

There wasn't time to worry about the strange atmosphere in the gunroom. Horatio's division formed the forward part of the anchor watch and he had to be up on deck shortly to see that the hammock cloths were triced up. 

He gulped down his breakfast. Clark helpfully took his tray from him as he got to his feet.

"Ah. Thank you," said Horatio stiffly, and then another boy was handing him his hat and others were leaning aside obligingly to make room for him to quit the table. 

When he reached the bottom of the companionway, Horatio paused and considered turning back and saying something to the other midshipmen to put a stop to their bizarre behaviour, but the idea of calling still more attention to himself proved so unappealing that he shook his head and hurried up the steps, eager to escape to his duties.

*

The spray had wet the sleeve of Horatio's peajacket and the side of his face and he hurriedly scrubbed his hand across his eyes.

"Stop!" came the shout from the man at the glass and Horatio instantly checked the progress of the line.

"How much, Mr Hornblower?" Bracegirdle called out. 

"Seven and a half, sir," said Horatio, hauling up the line hand over hand.

Bracegirdle filled his lungs with the bracing cold air, looking about him in satisfaction.

"She's making good speed with this wind," said Mr Bowles as Horatio coiled the line and came to record the log on the slate.

"Ah, Mr Hornblower-" Bracegirdle called as Horatio started down the steps.

"Sir."

Bracegirdle came down the steps with him and they paused together at the bottom.

"I trust..." Bracegirdle rested his hand on the stair rail. "You're settling back into your duties without any trouble?"

"Yes, sir," said Horatio, writhing inwardly at this fresh reminder of his recent behaviour.

"You're feeling quite recovered, are you?"

"Yes, sir."

Bracegirdle lent forward slightly. "And they're not giving you too hard a time of it in the gunroom?"

"No, sir," Horatio said, or began to say, when a voice came piping loudly from the waist.

" 'alf the bloody men he thrown off him - he even thrown the officers off!"

Horatio eyes went wide with dismay as he recognised the owner of that crowing voice as Oldroyd, one of the men of his own division at work with scrubbing brush, wet sand, soap and canvas.

Horatio ducked his head, his face burning as Oldroyd went on,

"They're a force a nature when they get like that."

"May I go, sir?" Horatio said. He knew he must go and rebuke the man immediately.

"Just a moment," said Bracegirdle, catching Horatio by the arm. Horatio looked at the lieutenant in confusion.

"Oh aye," said another voice - Styles. "You're an expert on the subject, are you, Oldroyd. You great lump. Hand us that brush."

"I seen it before when I was in the old Stately-"

"'Course you did."

"I did!" There was a slap of wet canvas hitting the deck. "And that's the other thing - it's not any alpha they'll go with. They'll fight 'em tooth an' claw if they don't fancy 'em. But for the captain, he gone in sweet as you like."

Horatio's whole body was rigid with embarrassment.

"Oh yes," said a third voice, belonging to Matthews, and even Horatio could hear there was only simple admiration in his tone. "Only the captain himself would do for Mr Hornblower."

"'Ee's that strong now, only fink how he's gonna be when he's grown!" said Oldroyd.

"Sir-" Horatio could not stand to listen a moment longer. Bracegirdle's look was almost kindly when Horatio could bring himself to meet the man's eye.

"You can learn a lot from listening to the men," said Bracegirdle. He raised his finger. "They have a healthy respect for your magic, Mr Hornblower."

Horatio was not sure what expression was on his face, but it made Bracegirdle smile, and the man took pity on him.

"Wait here," he murmured, then set off across the deck. The men kneeling at their work startled badly as the first lieutenant suddenly stepped among them, bellowing,

"Enough of that talk!" 

There was a terrible silence accentuated by coarse scrubbing of the deck which was taken up with a renewed vigour.

"Mr Hornblower!" Bracegirdle shouted, and Horatio stepped into view of the men and hastened to place himself in front of the lieutenant.

"Sir!" He stood stiffly to attention.

"Why are you not overseeing these men here?"

"I-" Horatio hesitated, looking at Bracegirdle in bewilderment. "I was casting the log, sir-"

"And do you let your men leave their clothes strewn about on the guns?"

A swift glance revealed that Oldroyd had removed his shirt and draped it over the carriage of one of the twelve-pounders.

"No, sir."

"You'll have this cleared away and I'll find everything stowed and orderly when I return!"

"Aye aye, sir!" 

Was there was a twinkle in Bracegirdle's eye as he moved off? Horatio stood stiffly for a moment or two before turning to face his men.

"Ever so sorry, sir," said Matthews, sitting back on his heels.

"Landed him in it, Oldroyd," Styles muttered.

"Sorry, sir," Oldroyd said shamefacedly as he snatched up his shirt and pulled it on quickly over his head.

"Let's finish here and dry down," Horatio said, striving to sound normal.

"Aye aye, sir!"

*


End file.
